Artillery Speculation

[LordTroll]

I honestly do like that LRM allows him to scale somewhat better with pure damage items. If you make it only base damage he will have to get agility items, and the attack speed on those in general means that his auto-attacks will be better than LRM faster.

How is that even a remotely negative aspect for the change? It gives him depth.

Many of you like to mathcraft on where his Q will become worse than autoattacks with enough attack speed, but you forget that his Q damages EVERYONE that comes in the AoE with no damage mitigation per effected unit. In a decent scenario, he can be DPS'ing 2-3 heroes at same time in a fight, which is huuuuge. It's many times more effective than simply auto-attacking 1, as AoE'ing multiple enemies with a scaling spell is no joke. I actually LIKE that LRM is less effective than auto-attacks, it forces the hero to make a choice. Do I want to focus down 1 hero, or do I want to gun down several heroes of the enemy team?

At the moment building him is quite weird comparing to other agility carries. You want pure damage, and when you're auto-attacking it feels mediocre because many neglect attack speed in order to have a super powerful Q. It's counter-intuitive for a carry.

So I'm all for making is Q bonus damage based on base damage. It makes building him with items more traditionally, and it makes him a solid carry with or without Q, as well as the arguments I gave before. Right now, nobody really wants to build him with something like a Wingbow when you can get a Savage Mace and feel so deadly. :3

[[ScBr]MadPsycho]

LRM is definitely the problem. Amazing harassing ability. Reducing his turn rate while firing would go a long ways to balancing. As it stands it's an easy skill to spam and with the physical slow it makes it difficult to run into stunning range to stop the channel if you don't have a blink. I think the idea that it should replace his autoattack is a good one. Too much utility at lower levels though.

[[RDi]NG_Beholder]

How is that even a remotely negative aspect for the change? It gives him depth.

Many of you like to mathcraft on where his Q will become worse than autoattacks with enough attack speed, but you forget that his Q damages EVERYONE that comes in the AoE with no damage mitigation per effected unit. In a decent scenario, he can be DPS'ing 2-3 heroes at same time in a fight, which is huuuuge. It's many times more effective than simply auto-attacking 1, as AoE'ing multiple enemies with a scaling spell is no joke. I actually LIKE that LRM is less effective than auto-attacks, it forces the hero to make a choice. Do I want to focus down 1 hero, or do I want to gun down several heroes of the enemy team?

At the moment building him is quite weird comparing to other agility carries. You want pure damage, and when you're auto-attacking it feels mediocre because many neglect attack speed in order to have a super powerful Q. It's counter-intuitive for a carry.

So I'm all for making is Q bonus damage based on base damage. It makes building him with items more traditionally, and it makes him a solid carry with or without Q, as well as the arguments I gave before. Right now, nobody really wants to build him with something like a Wingbow when you can get a Savage Mace and feel so deadly. :3

Do you remember old FA's Split Shot? There was no sense to level it up before lvl 17 or so, despite that skill wasn't channeling, could reliably hit several heroes, could apply FWS/Shieldbreaker AM onto entire enemy team, could proc SM, and all of that for only 30% of auto-attack damage. Nerf LRM and you'll receive a completely garbage version of Flint Beastwood.

[[f13]`11411181]

And was also 65? % of all damage at max level.
Making it scale off base damage won't gut the skill, but it will restrict his item choices in terms of abusing LRM effectively. Base damage is increased by stacking primary attribute.

[[NU]Tomate]

Am actually curious to see this hero once he becomes available to everyone. He seems to be fairly strong with LRM and his ultimate but bunker seems somewhat MEH.

The issue really is to close the gap with this hero when he is using LRM. I played against 1 guy that had Phase Boots and Frost Burn and he could stay WAY back in teamfights, using LRM and laughing and coming into the fight to kite us all day. Once we see more of this hero, we should have a better idea as to where he stands.

[CrimsonAdder]

And was also 65? % of all damage at max level.
Making it scale off base damage won't gut the skill, but it will restrict his item choices in terms of abusing LRM effectively. Base damage is increased by stacking primary attribute.

Yeah. And that sounds interesting to me!

[[IaF]Skyve]

How is that even a remotely negative aspect for the change? It gives him depth.

Removing possibilities doesn't add depth.

[CrimsonAdder]

Removing possibilities doesn't add depth.

It ADDS possibility in both deciding either to auto-attack or use LRM (do I want to be a normal carry that can focus down 1 enemy with both attack speed and damage, or do I need to make use of LRM to DPS several enemies / finish off someone?) and makes his item choices far more diverse.

Any Artillery atm tries to be as much damage based as possible, ignoring agility and attackspeed. It's a rather obnoxious way of building a carry in my opinion. YEAH, you can do usual builds on him, but his LRM won't be even close to as effective as it can be, it really demolishes house with pure damage and people don't want to abdicate off that.

[Master_One]

ridiculous, hes not op.

he is easy 2 kill as flint or moa.

also talking about lmr, don tell me everybody of u hits all the rockets everytime. thats just ridiculous.

[[IaF]Skyve]

It ADDS possibility in both deciding either to auto-attack or use LRM (do I want to be a normal carry that can focus down 1 enemy with both attack speed and damage, or do I need to make use of LRM to DPS several enemies / finish off someone?) and makes his item choices far more diverse.

Currently you have the option to only build damage (which primarily benefits your LRM) OR build agility, which scales well with Bunker Down.

If you make his LRM only scale with base damage, then there is no more "OR" - thus LESS possibilities, less options, less depth.

[CrimsonAdder]

If you make his LRM only scale with base damage, then there is no more "OR" - thus LESS possibilities, less options, less depth.

I disagree, because I doubt Artillery can rely only on Agility based items late game even with LRM being based on base damage.
A mix of agility items like Wingbow/Genjuro/Geometers Bane and Savage Mace / crit stick or so would allow him to be effective all game with an intuitive item build.

[KingIsRey]

I am clocking a lvl 16 Artillery with Ghost Marchers, 2x Soulscream Ring, and Geometer's at 296-301 DPS with LRM (including Bunker Down bonus).
Add in Genjuro, and that jumps to 394-399.
All this talk about "options" and "depth" is pure bs, with the base damage bonus on Bunker Down Artillery can build agility like other ranged agility carries and still get great damage out of LRM. I am wondering how many of you saying that Artillery can't do both are actually claculating.
***Yes I am testing before I post such things. Feel free to recreate my tests:

-Lvl 16 Artillery vs Voodoo Jester's lvl 2 (300 DPS) and lvl 3 (400 DPS) Spirit Ward for damage perspective. [I feel VJ ult is a good ult in terms of DPS, a common spell like LRM should not be able to match a ult]

-My tests are done in a slow-mo enviroment to clock LRM and Spirit Ward at the closest beginning start time (I start them at same time)

-Use two lvl 1 Pebbles as target dummies since they have almost no start armor (and around 600 HP). Guesstimate (not a word, I kno) the percent error between the time of deaths between the two lvl1 Pebbles. [Both Pebbles die in about 2 seconds time]

-When calculating LRM with Genjuro added, I gave both Pebbles 2x Axe of the Malphai to boost their HP to 1556. The purpose of this was to test if Artillery's LRM really is capable of dealing around 1600 total damage with the 4 secs of channeling the 400 DPS LRM. [Artillery knocks out his Pebbles on par with Voodoo Jester]

[[S0CK]Sharpryno]

Except you have to be an idiot to get hit my more than half of his missiles.

[KingIsRey]

Its not a 1v1 match, and he does have a stun

[Fromundaman]

Except you have to be an idiot to get hit my more than half of his missiles.

Tell me, how do you usually determine your character choice? I usually base mine off of what the team has selected. If I see an artillery, I'm going Tempest, or at the very least someone with an AoE stun. In team fights, most of his missiles should be hitting if the team is even slightly competent.

[KingIsRey]

The missiles don't even have decay on piercing to additional targets like Aluna's Power Throw (10% reduction per target hit) and Forsaken Archer's Piercing Arrows (another 10% per target hit).

[PrestonLee]

The missiles don't even have decay on piercing to additional targets like Aluna's Power Throw (10% reduction per target hit) and Forsaken Archer's Piercing Arrows (another 10% per target hit).

^I think this is pretty much all that needs to happen to make him 'acceptable'

we can argue about the physical slow, bunker down, the ulti or wahtever but the only thing that is really broken and needs attention is the damage not diminishing as it hits multiple targets. just doing this alone will likely balance the damage output quite nicely and make it still very viable but just not broken

[[999]colondee]

Maybe strong in good setups where players play together. Not so strong if nobody covers you. It is good when you can stand behind and channel your damage. Does not have such strong early game presence as Forsaken Archer or Flint... comparing LRM to FA ultimate is silly, because FA has immobilize+skeletons, flint has nuke, Artillery is extremely lategame compared even to Flint. What I like about Artillery is pseudo-initiation and slow so she can somehow support other heroes too (and I think she should) instead of stupidly farming the jungle. The range is suited against heroes, not against creepcamps, because you get long range instead of high effectivity and low range, low range and high damage is better against creepcamps at least in midgame forward when heroes have a lot of mana to spam. Artillery needs items for its Q to be really effective, so she is far more farm-dependent WHILE being a bad farmer without items - so she should get assists and kills instead.

[KingIsRey]

The only thing I compared about LRM and FA ult is the damage reduction upon piercing to additional targets which is a big bonus for LRM when considering the possibility of high DPS on several enemies. Not sure why they decided to place that 60% reduction versus creeps when they coulda just implemented the 10% reduction per enemy to limit the power on farming creep waves and nerf LRM's DPS versus several pinned down heroes.

[[NU]Tomate]

I actually look forward to playing this hero myself... I did not buy the early access but he seems fairly OP in his current form. Closing the gap on this hero is a very painful process. It almost is impossible to get the jump on him as he has his ultimate to create a gap and LRM is SUCH a long range spell.